Learning to be a Community of Reconciliation (2)

 

 

I. Required readings

           

Psalm 22

Joel 3:1-5

Matthew 5:9

            Acts 2:17-18

Ephesians 2:1-22

             

Christian Biography for the Day: Absalom Jones

          

             Johann Christoph Arnold, “What is Peace?”

 

            Chittister, Chapter 14 (“Peace: Sign of the Disarmed Heart”), 181-93

            Jeremy Cowart, "If Rwandans can forgive killings, we can forgive the waitress."

II. Quotation for the day

 

“When Jesus proclaimed the kingdom of God on earth, he was not offering to make people more comfortable in their sins. He was calling them to a new life in the spirit and to citizenship in his beloved community, which alone is capable of peace.”

 

            --Clarence Jordan, founder of a multi-racial Christian community in Georgia in 1942 called Koinonia and also co-founder of Habitat for Humanity.

 

III. Journal prompts

 

1. The Ephesians passage insists that part of the gospel (“the good news”) is that God has broken down the dividing wall of hostility between Jew and Gentile and out of two people has created “one new humanity.”  What are the social barriers and dividing walls that need to be overcome in our day?  In what ways are those barriers being broken down in and through the community of Jesus’ disciples?  In what ways do we continue to build up and sustain these walls?

 

2. How do the readings from Arnold and Chittister stretch your understanding of “peace”?  In light of these readings, how would you understand the beatitude: “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called children of God” (Matthew 5:9)?

 

3. In what ways is the work of the Spirit, announced in Joel and fulfilled in the Book of Acts, a work of reconciliation and peacemaking?

 

 

IV. Links of possible interest

 

            G. McLeod Bryan, “Theology in Overalls: The Imprint of Clarence Jordan”  A brief article profiling the faith and influence of this remarkable Baptist from the Bible Belt.

 

            Koinonia Farm    The homepage for the still-active Christian farm community founded by Clarence Jordan as a "demonstration plot for the kingdom of God."
 

 

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